DELHI THE CITY OF DJINNS. PART 1.

Delhi had a great reputation for its enormous wealth and attracted hordes of warlords with swords and muscle power to attack it and take away all the riches. During their attacks they razed the city to ground without fail.

It had also an unsavoury reputation that whoever rebuilt the city had to leave it often unceremoniously. Even the British left Lutyens’s New Delhi halfway through.

Speaking of the riches first the travelogues of many reveal some interesting facts. The wealth of Delhi can be imagined from the writings of Ibn Batutla who served in the court of the one and only infamous Tughlak. The sultan fearing attacks from Mongols shifted his capital to Daulatabad around 1340. When he encountered resistance to his idea he burnt Delhi to ruins and massacred millions. Obsessed with the idea of constructing forts of impregnable defence, he constructed one such at Tughlukabad and “deposited within this town a vast store of wealth. It is reported that he constructed a tank and poured into it molten gold so that it became one vast molten bloc.”

About building the city it was initially built by Kauravas and called Hastinapura. The kauravas lost and the city was destroyed. There is a wafer thin Archaeological evidence of the existence of prehistoric Hastinapura.

It was Mohammad Ghori who first attacked in 1192 the Kingdom of Delhi then ruled by a Rajput king Prithviraj Chowhan. Prithviraj successfully repulsed the attack and defeated Ghori but out of sheer magnanimity or chivalry he released the captive Mohammed. The treacherous Turk returned in 1192 with a larger force of Turks and defeated Prithvi Raj at the battle of Tarori. Prithvi Raj could have succeeded again but his father in law Jai Chand refused to help him all because the valiant and legendary Prithvi Raj in a chivalrous fashion eloped with the daughter of Jai Chand. This petty family quarrel started the ruin of India. Mohammad Ghori was not chivalrous like Prithviraj but vindictive to the hilt. He beheaded Prithviraj, paraded his head around, burned to the ground the fort of Lal Kot, went on to destroy all the Hindu temples and looted all the treasures in them. The first Islamic mosque in India was built using the masonry and pillars from the 67 temples of Delhi. The wanton destruction of Hindu temples and thorough looting of them by Mohammed Ghori and later Mohammed Ghazni is common knowledge. Most of the mosques in India were constructed using the jewels and precious stones looted from the temples.

Though it had been burned by invaders time and again, millennium after millennium, the city was rebuilt; each time it rose like a phoenix from the fire.

When his subjects refused to shift from Delhi and started rebelling, Mohammed Bin Tuglahq in a fit of rage burnt the city to ashes and killed millions mercilessly. But soon he died and his dynasty had to flee the country.

The next to rebuild the city was Shah Jehan who didn’t last long after building Delhi and shifting his capital from Agra. The city was razed to the ground again by the Britishers after the 1857 Indian mutiny. The Britishers were no less savage than the earlier Islamic rulers. “They believed that God was really an Englishman and subduing the rebellious heathen was his own special work. When they put down the Mutiny they executed three thousand Delhi wallahs. The British soldiers apparently bribed the hangmen to keep the condemned men a long time hanging as they liked to see the criminals dance a “Pandy’s hornpipe” as they called the dying struggles of the accused.” The behaviour of the British after the capture of Delhi, sending the last Mogul Emperor unceremoniously to Rangoon and their conduct was extraordinary to say the least. “It was as if in victory all the most horrible characteristics of the English character-philistinism, narrow mindedness, bigotry and vengefulness suddenly surfaced. Their conduct in Jallianwallah Bagh massacre confirms the presence of a strong streak of savagery of the white sahibs.

They also looted the precious things whenever and whatever possible. A ship carrying a Governor of a state returning to England after his retirement floundered near the Isle of Man. The treasure discovered in the wreck by a treasure hunt company made them richer by more than ₤1 billion.

The Coronation Park where three grand durbars were held with all the imperial pageantry today seems flat, uninteresting and stranded now amid a great flooded wilderness.

The building of New Delhi started almost at the same time as the construction of the monuments of Berlin. While the Germans entrusted this work to Albert Speer who played an important and significant role in the rise of the Third Reich the Britishers entrusted the task of building New Delhi to Lutyens.

“In its monstrous, almost megalomaniac scale, in its perfect symmetry and arrogant presumption, there was a distant but distinct echo of something fascist or even Nazi about the great acropolis of Imperial Delhi.

In New Delhi as in fascist Milan or Nazi Berlin, the individual is lost; the scale is not human but super human, not national but super national; it is in a word, Imperial.”

The present day Rajpath once the Kingsway is one of the greatest ceremonial ways of the world. “It was originally planned as an Imperial Champs Elysees of Paris complete with India gate, its own butter coloured Arc de Triomphe. But it is far wider, far greener far more magnificent than anything comparable in Europe. On either side run wide lawns giving on to fountains and straight avenues of casuarinas and eucalyptus.” This is where all the Delhites park themselves for enjoyment, fun and relaxation in the evenings especially in summer.

Ahead, high on the Raisana Hill stands the Rashtrapthi Bhavan and the road leading to it is flanked by the North and South blocks where all the important ministries of our Government are located.

When the British left the very resourceful Punjabis who left everything behind in Pakistan and started their life from scratch in refugee camps built the modern Delhi as it stands today by dint of their sheer hard work and entrepreneurship.

It is no hyperbole to say that despite the overcrowding in certain areas New Delhi today is definitely a tourist’s paradise with many historical monuments and wonderful lush green gardens. Every Indian must visit this city, enjoy the sightseeing and get a historical perspective of the city and our country. The months of November to March although cold are ideal for the visit. Combined with a visit to Taj Mahal, Fathepur Sikri and other historical monuments it will be a grand and enjoyable vacation to remember for long.

The rebuilding of the city many times and the jinx associated with the city is linked to the presence of a large number of the Djinns according to the belief of many especially the Muslims. To know what the Djinns stand for and how they together with dervishes influenced the cultural and other aspects of the city watch this space.

(I acknowledge without any reservations that I borrowed ideas and even lifted sentences in toto from the travelogue of William Dalrymple bearing the same title)